Anglicans and Religious Liberty<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Over at The Spectator, James Mumford offers a hard-hitting analysis of the response to the recent Anglican summit. Mumford doesn't analyze the summit\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anglicans and Religious Liberty\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over at The Spectator, James Mumford offers a hard-hitting analysis of the response to the recent Anglican summit. Mumford doesn't analyze the summit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Leithart\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-01-21T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter Leithart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@PLeithart\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Peter Leithart\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/\",\"name\":\"Anglicans and Religious Liberty\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-21T00:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-21T00:00:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d\"},\"description\":\"Over at The Spectator, James Mumford offers a hard-hitting analysis of the response to the recent Anglican summit. Mumford doesn't analyze the summit\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Anglicans and Religious Liberty\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/\",\"name\":\"Leithart\",\"description\":\"My blog is a public notebook, featuring essays, notes, and explorations on Scripture, theology, literature, politics, culture.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d\",\"name\":\"Peter Leithart\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Peter Leithart\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/\",\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PLeithart\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/author\/pleithart\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Anglicans and Religious Liberty","description":"Over at The Spectator, James Mumford offers a hard-hitting analysis of the response to the recent Anglican summit. Mumford doesn't analyze the summit","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Anglicans and Religious Liberty","og_description":"Over at The Spectator, James Mumford offers a hard-hitting analysis of the response to the recent Anglican summit. Mumford doesn't analyze the summit","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/","og_site_name":"Leithart","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/","article_published_time":"2016-01-21T00:00:00+00:00","author":"Peter Leithart","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@PLeithart","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Peter Leithart","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/","name":"Anglicans and Religious Liberty","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-01-21T00:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-21T00:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d"},"description":"Over at The Spectator, James Mumford offers a hard-hitting analysis of the response to the recent Anglican summit. Mumford doesn't analyze the summit","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Anglicans and Religious Liberty"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/","name":"Leithart","description":"My blog is a public notebook, featuring essays, notes, and explorations on Scripture, theology, literature, politics, culture.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/6bb7113e4dd45fe26045622aa56f891d","name":"Peter Leithart","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/f1033df9cd7263d2e0408cf9ee92ee4d?s=96&d=identicon&r=pg","caption":"Peter Leithart"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Leithart\/","https:\/\/twitter.com\/PLeithart"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/author\/pleithart\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3021"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":17844,"date":"2016-01-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2667"},"modified":"2016-01-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T00:00:00","slug":"anglicans-and-religious-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/01\/anglicans-and-religious-liberty\/","title":{"rendered":"Anglicans and Religious Liberty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

Over at\u00a0The Spectator<\/a>, James Mumford offers a hard-hitting analysis of the response to the recent Anglican summit. Mumford doesn\u2019t analyze the summit itself, but the blustering response from politicians and the press:<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Thursday the Labour shadow cabinet minister and former Anglican priest, Chris Bryant, declared he had left the Church of England for good. The Church\u2019s decision will one day \u2018seem [as] wrong as supporting slavery\u2019 he tweeted. On Saturday the<\/em> Times <\/i>published a full-blown invective. The Church has no right, the editorial claimed, to maintain its traditional doctrine of marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such sentiments alarm Mumford, as they should. He writes, \u201ca healthy society hinges upon the freedom of communities to have and to express their take on the most contested dimensions of human identity and morality. And in our brighter moments as a species we have shown that that doesn\u2019t have to involve inflicting harm on members of communities who have reached different conclusions.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he worries that something \u201ceven more ominous\u201d is embedded in these reactions. Public opinion, he observes, can pave \u201cthe way for state intervention.\u201d And then what?<\/p>\n

A full-scale assault on religious liberty? It\u2019s happened before, in modern sophisticated Europe: \u201cthe 1840s saw cartoons flooding German salons representing Catholics impeding the course of history, a depiction Bismarck was able to capitalise on in the 1870s. He launched his Kulturkampf<\/i> (\u2018culture struggle\u2019) against Catholicism on the grounds that it was \u2018archaic\u2019. In France in 1902, the acceleration of la\u00efcit\u00e9<\/i> under the premiership of \u00c9mile Combes \u2013 in a single year he closed 13,000 of the country\u2019s 16,000 religious schools \u2013 stemmed from the Third Republic\u2019s dismissal of religion as insufficiently modern. While in Russia, Bolshevist propaganda, before and after the Revolution, consistently portrayed the Orthodox Church as an obstacle to social progress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mumford acknowledges that the stated\u00a0\u201caim is to eradicate extremism.\u201d But he pointedly asks the right question: \u201chow elastically will \u2018extremism\u2019 come to be defined in a society that has moved, without even noticing it, from expecting communities not to compel beliefs to expecting communities not to have them?\u201d<\/p>\n

Mumford knows he sounds alarmist. So do all the other observers who see a trend toward suppression or restriction of orthodox faith. It can\u2019t be helped. Alarms, after all, have a purpose. Sometimes they have to be sounded.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"